As the world commemorates the anniversary of VE-Day, Victory in Europe over the forces of Nazi Germany in 1945, we are aware that the WWII generation that fought the battles and witnessed the events is passing from the scene. Sooner than we care to imagine, there will be no one left to provide personal testimony to the most pivotal event in modern history. Because of the war’s centrality to the founding of our modern world, however, we will still need to examine and think deeply about the answers we provide to the questions: what did it all mean? What was ultimately at stake in World War II?

For myself, there are two major legacies of the war that I have learned, and taught others, over the years. First is a political legacy: victory over Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany was essential for the survival of democracy and free institutions in the modern world. The Third Reich crushed ideals of individual freedom and equality wherever it triumphed, and at its peak Hitler’s empire stretched from Norway in the north to North Africa in the Mediterranean south, from France’s Atlantic shores in the west to the banks of the Volga River in the east. Wherever Nazism spread, oppression and slavery were founded.

The second legacy, however, is deeper, more philosophic, and grounded in humanism and the human spirit. The Nazi empire was erected in the name of a racist utopian vision where the strong eliminated any notions of compassion or shared humanity with those deemed weak and inferior. Hatred justified mass murder of people, ranging from the elderly to women and children, just for being who they were. What set the Nazi regime apart was its unrelenting, extreme totality:  all were condemned to death, without exception, no one spared. The Death’s Head with empty eye sockets, worn against the black SS hats and uniforms, was the ultimate symbol of Nazi ideology. There was no light inside, no spark of conscience, nothing human, no spirit: only void and death.

This second legacy was personally imprinted on me when I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on a museum tour in 2017. What is important to remember, not just on VE-Day but whenever we think of this history, is what was stopped.

Located near the town of Oświęcim in Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau combined forced labor with extermination operations in 1942-1944. Auschwitz was a prisoner and labor camp, while Birkenau was a death camp. All told 1.3 million people were deported there by the Nazis. These included 1.1 million Jews, over 140,000 Poles, 33,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet Prisoners of War and 25,000 prisoners from other ethnic groups. All told 1.1 million were murdered; 90 percent of the murdered were Jews asphyxiated in gas chambers. The camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945, a few months before the final end of the Third Reich. Auschwitz-Birkenau is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Upon entry into Auschwitz, after walking under the infamous sign that greeted victims with the message Arbeit Mach Frei (Work Makes You Free), what struck me first was the appalling cruelty of the faked appearance of civilized behavior within. An orchestra played as new inmates walked the path, ostensibly to calm nerves and give hope in a place where inhumanity reigned.

Music can feed the soul, but not the stomach. The Nazis made sure that the latter was never satisfied. Starvation and hunger was inflicted on the victims, as people wasted into malnourished skeletons covered in tight skin.

It can never be forgotten that despite Nazi deceptions via music or flower beds, Auschwitz-Birkenau was a prison. Barbed wire enclosures were a constant reminder that those within were not free, no matter what the entry sign proclaimed.

 The presence of death is ubiquitous. Even though Auschwitz was technically a labor camp, there were many ways to murder people outside the gas chambers of Birkenau. Victims were lined up against an execution wall in a courtyard and shot.

A gallows was built for hangings. When I visited here I could see in my mind’s eye other images of hangings conducted by the Nazis I had seen conducted elsewhere, particularly one of a young girl and another of a mass hanging of young men.  I could remember their faces in the photos. I could not walk under the gallows, because I was looking at the spots on the ground where the victims’ feet must have dangled over, and stretched to touch in their last moments.

Auschwitz actually has a smaller crematorium on its grounds, not to be confused with the four large crematoria that were built for the Birkenau camp and that operated as part of an industrial mass-murder operation. Inside the door to the right side of the building, victims were gassed by Zyklon B dropped into the room from holes in the ceiling. On the left side of the building where the chimney is located are three ovens to burn the bodies. The bodies were loaded onto wheeled metal carts on rails which ran to the mouths of the ovens.

 A railway line (and a highway today) bisects Auschwitz-Birkenau (there is a third camp in the system known as Birkenau II, but I did not visit that site). After crossing, we went first into the guard tower at Birkenau, which overlooks sprawling grounds of barracks. Needless to say, conditions were notoriously inhuman. But through the mouth of the building under the guard tower, trains came into Birkenau, and people were immediately selected for death when they were unloaded.  Guards stood in the room, looking through this window at those tracks below, and watched.

What is unforgettable, and makes the horror of the Nazi regime all too real to me, is when individual victims make their way into your consciousness. Sometimes you don’t know their names. You only know something about their tastes, their likes. When I look at these brushes, I think about their owners. Look carefully and you can see hairbrushes, powder brushes, some with stiffer bristles that perhaps were used on their shoes. Who were these people? Were some of these gifts from loved ones? When they purchased these brushes, could they ever think that their brushes would be left behind in a place like this?

In another exhibit, the names of victims are painted on their suitcases. Their lives ended in this place where over a million souls perished, but in viewing their name on a piece of luggage, I start to try to picture their faces. Who might have owned such a suitcase? Georg Adler . . . Heinz Wittkowski . . . Martha Zaudÿ . . . Irene Karpeles . . . Franz Wolf . . . All murdered, but still with us.